TouchMaster 3 is a DS game released in 2009 and is obviously the 3rd game in the TouchMaster series. The game was developed by Hijinx Studios, LLC, and published by Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment. Hijinx Studios, LLC is an obscure company, I mean, they don’t even have a Wikipedia page. From what I can tell they made only a few games, which their most notable game would be Silent Hill: HD Collection (MobyGames). They don’t even make games anymore, and they might not even exist anymore. Anyway, now time to actually discuss TouchMaster 3.
TouchMaster 3 is a mini-game collection that has twenty stylus-based mini-games. Remember that this is for the DS, it seemed to be a law to use the bottom touch screen, even if it’s pointless. However, TouchMaster 3 has mini-games that make sense for a stylus. There are five categories of games, which are Card, Strategy, Action, Puzzle, and Word. I’m not going to sit here, and review every mini-game, that would be boring, so instead, I’ll be discussing what I think of the game as a whole, and use the mini-games to provide examples.
TouchMaster 3 is made for a casual audience, and a lot of the games have that feel to them. Some examples of this would be “Recall,” which is basically a memory rhythm game, like the Simon electronic game, and “Sea Word,” which is a game about swimming around, and collecting letters to spell the word the game tells you to spell. This isn’t a bad thing, and I do enjoy simpler games from time to time, and they don’t ruin the collection for me, even some of my favorite games are simpler games in this collection, such as “Nine Hole,” a card game that plays like Pyramids, or Tripeaks, requiring you to remove cards from the play area, by using your deck. If you draw a two, you can either get rid of a three, or ace, because three comes after two, and two come after ace.
The game also has more complex, and creative games. One of these would be “Slime Assault,” a game where you defend your area from slimes. To do this you need to launch bombs at the slime by flinging them with the stylus. After each wave, you can then upgrade a bomb into a new type of bomb with different effects. There are ice bombs, which freezes slimes, toxic bombs, which poisons slimes, land mines, and missiles. Another example would be “Cannon Fire,” a game where you aim a cannon to kill slimes. You have three cranks, which move the cannon. The three cranks move the cannon at different speeds. One crack can zoom out quickly, while another will move the cannon more specifically. There are also power-ups to help kill the slimes. These two are some of my favorites from the collection, they control well, and have that simple, but a fun factor to them.
Some of these games are not great. The games are mostly going to be based on personal taste however controls do ruin some of the games. One example of this would be “Poker Slide,” a game where you need to slide the playing field of cards horizontally, or vertically in order to form the pattern on the top screen. This is fine when the controls work, but when sliding the cards, I find they will go vertically sometimes when I drag the stylus horizontally. This isn’t a big offender, but it's just annoying. Another example is “Prisma Tix 2,” where you need to find a sequence of colors that are listed on the top screen. If you need to find two green circles, followed by two yellow circles, you tap the sequence in order on the bottom screen when you find it, but the game seems to have a problem, which is counting the piece when I touch it. The control issues in some games can ruin them, but TouchMaster 3 has one massive flow throughout all of its games.
TouchMaster 3 doesn’t explain how to play its games well at all. In fact, there are five gaminess I still don’t fully know how to play, those games being, “Target Royale,” “Stud Royale,” “Triples Plus,” “Domino Run,” and “Block Dropper.” The first three in the list are based on poker, so that’s probably why I don’t understand them, however, the game itself doesn’t explain it’s games well at all. The game just uses text to explain games, with no tutorials insight. This would be fine if the game explains the games well, but it doesn't give an example, let’s use Dice King 2. Dice King 2 is one of those simple puzzle games where you have to get three of the same color dice together, by moving the dice. Dice are moved adjacently, switching spots with the other die. The top screen tells you an objective like “Three of a kind,” so you have to match the same color three times. This game is basically Bejeweled, or Candy Crush. My explanation was simple, but the game has to explain it in fifteen short paragraphs. The game’s explanations cause me to get lost, and end up more confused. I decided to look in the instruction manual for some reason, and the instruction manual explains the games much simpler. Dice King 2 is explained in one paragraph, and it explains it simply enough for a lot of people to understand. Clearly the people in charge of the manual thought the in-game explanations were terrible and decided to write their own.
Do I hate TouchMaster 3? No, I don’t, but it’s not anything good either. Most of these games can probably be found in some format on Mobile, and nothing is going to keep you playing for hours. These games are made for short bursts, and I’m fine with that. In 2020, this game has very little purpose, but in 2009, it had the purpose of serving as a cheap mini-game collection for the DS. I don’t recommend picking this game up unless you love DS mini-game collections.
References
.
Comments